


The Boggart Rule

by Ornery Otter (Greiver_Dhark)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Implied abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21796099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greiver_Dhark/pseuds/Ornery%20Otter
Summary: Just a short piece taking place in the aftermath of Lupin’s boggart lesson, the identity of Neville’s boggart has some ramifications.
Kudos: 21





	The Boggart Rule

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd

Severus Snape’s tenure at Hogwarts came to an abrupt end in Harry’s third year, two weeks after Lupin’s boggart lesson. 

No amount of Dumbledore’s obfuscating could stop it, though he did try – delaying and interfering enough that what should have taken a few days took instead a full two weeks – but not even the venerable headmaster could prevent his potion master’s sacking. 

Most of the students cheered when the ministry invaded, three days after that fateful lesson, declaring the hated professor under investigation and suspended until further notice, pending the results. Dumbledore had intervened of course, taking the involved parties away to his office and apparently filibustering sufficiently to cause delay – only delay, regardless of how much weight he threw around in that meeting and the following days, using both grandfatherly façade and magical might by turns. 

No, there was nothing Albus could do to stop this – it was out of his hands, out of even the ministry’s hands. No matter how many interested parties had exerted their control over the school over the years (the ministry assigning the syllabus by instigating standard exams, the school board instituted by people looking to influence both the school and the syllabus, ostensibly parents but just as often not, and the staff at the school, in particular Dumbledore who used it for his own ends, unrelated to the wellbeing of the school itself) there were some things that could not be changed by outside factors – rules that were embedded into the very foundation of the castle itself, back when it was first founded and established as an independent entity. 

One of those rules was that, should a boggart ever take the form of a person, that person was to immediately and thoroughly be investigated by the school and either isolated or expelled from the castle. If the accused party wasn’t within the school borders they were to be investigated by faculty. 

After all, for a boggart to take the form of a human being that meant that of all things that existed to be feared, someone feared that person the most. 

Of course fear was a tricky subject – a young, naïve child might fear someone who looked scary because they had never seen anything scarier – hence the isolation and mandatory investigation. Since Dumbledore had been refusing to open an investigation in the first place, the summons to the ministry went out for them to do so instead. The Boggart rule was in the Hogwart’s charter, one of the few things that Hogwarts itself had autonomy and authority to action from, and the Headmaster failing in his duty didn’t just make it go away, as so many other things Dumbledore ignored did. 

Complaints had come in regarding Snape’s propriety as a teacher ever since he’d first been given his position – at first concerns about his age and inexperience as a teacher, and then more justified as students reported what his classes were actually like. Dumbledore had stonewalled such opposition of course – hiring teachers and curtailing their behaviours ultimately fell on him and as long as he did nothing, nobody else could either unless the man stepped out far enough to be stopped some other way – such as if he’d broken the law and came under ministry justice. 

The school had existed for a long time – longer than much of the rest of the wizarding world had in its current form. When kings ruled and invaded, before the kingdom was United, Hogwarts had stood, a bastion of wizarding strength and safety. And so it protected its own – the school itself enforcing the rules it had been founded upon, coming to the aid of those who resided within it and not any magical government. 

But the Boggart rule... well, boggarts had existed for just as long, and human cruelty was nothing new. Originally it had been put into place for protection, because so few victims came forward with abuse even in those days, and a boggart served as evidence in its own right. Over the years several professors, parents, and even other students had been condemned due to their victims stumbling over a boggart. Tales of torment discovered, where their assailants were too canny to leave any other trace. Of the hundreds over the years who had been condemned with boggart testimony, only two had ever been found innocent. One it turned out had simply been the subject of a series of ghost stories told by the children the night prior to them encountering a boggart, and the other had been visually intimidating but also not a vampire, which the child had feared they were. 

It wasn’t that it was necessarily uncommon for someone’s boggart to turn into another person, however usually that person was a known criminal – like Grindelwald, who had been the nightmare of many children back during the height of his power. In the old days of Hogwart’s past, many boggarts had turned into muggles, men who had stormed the homes of magical kind with pitchforks and torches, to set them to the flame. 

Sometimes however, the boggart would take the form of family, or friends, or teachers, and in those instances immediate action was taken under the boggart rule. If the face of the boggart was within the castle walls they were immediately surrounded on all sides by castle wall, blocked in until a satisfactory investigation was conducted. The house elves could still reach them, but could not remove him or provide him with more than basic necessities no matter what Dumbledore tried to order them to do. 

Snape himself had been fed up of being trapped in a small box in short order, and hadn’t appreciated Dumbledore trying to delay the investigation when the man could be casting him out of the castle instead. It wasn’t like he enjoyed teaching after all. If he feared the results of the investigation he didn’t say, but he did seem in a hurry to get out of the castle. 

For most of the students of Hogwarts, Snape being thrown out of the castle was ‘a long time coming’ and something to cheer about. Few gave much thought to the how or why of it, though it was clear the teachers knew something. 

Neville himself said nothing, and none of the other children thought to ask why Snape had been his boggart, or understood the importance of it. Had the knowledge spread past his year group, it likely would have – older student might have realised something strange about the boy being more afraid of his potions professor, given that rumor had it he’d seen what happened to his parents all those years ago, hidden away and mute in horror. Most would have assumed he’d fear Bellatrix Lestrange or one of the Lestrange brothers who had tortured his parents. Even if he’d buried those memories, or lost them due to his age, their effect would have lingered, if only in the stories, in the knowledge every time he visited his parents and seen them so reduced. 

But the few that knew didn’t understand, taking Neville’s fear of his professor as another example of weak, cowardly Neville, bumbling fool of Gryffindor, were oblivious to the significance of his boggart. 

No, for most of the school the strange situation of Professor Snape being abruptly unavailable to teach class for several days, and then suddenly under investigation by the ministry, came out of the blue. None of them had known their teacher was blocked off within the castle walls for days instead of just ‘unavailable’ as they’d been told. 

It was only under armed guard from the ministry that Snape was finally released from his prison, and he was forced to be tried within the castle itself. When they tried to escort him out Hogwarts put up its walls once again. The boggart rule was an investigation from Hogwarts, not the ministry itself despite needing its aid to follow through. 

Two hours after the questioning began, Snape was permanently escorted off the premises. He wouldn’t be back.


End file.
